Nimshew Park going dry

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Magalia resident Kris Nikolauson says his park has lost water since PG&E lined an earthen canal that fed into Middle Butte Creek, which leads through Nimshew Park. Trevor Warner - Paradise Post

This how the waterfall at Nimshew Park normally looks, said park owner Kris Nikolauson. He said when PG&E when lined an earthen canal that fed Middle Butte Creek, his park last water. Contributed photo.

He worked for 30 years on the park, creating waterfalls, swimming ponds, wading pools, a zip line, retro-style playground equipment and other amenities, and opened the park to the public for free.

Last year, the water flow stopped when PG&E lined about a mile of the earthen Upper Centerville canal, which was seeping into Middle Butte Creek, which run through Nimshew Park.

Nikolauson said seepage from the canal flowed into his park, ultimately giving visitors a unique park experience.

But without the water the wading pool is a mud hole, there is no waterfall, and the swimming pond is getting lower.

“(The park) has lost its aesthetics because of the lack of flow,” he said, as visiting children played in the background.

He said the park has become a focal point in the community and PG&E’s actions deny the community water that has been flowing for the past 30 years and longer.

“People have come to depend on this water,” he said.

Since the water has been flowing through the area for so long, his right to the water was grandfathered in, he said.

“Nope,” said Paul Moreno, PG&E spokesman.

In a nutshell, the 1942 Butte Creek adjudication consolidated all information regarding water rights into one action. Essentially, the Butte County Superior Court “reset the clock, and started from scratch,” Moreno said.

There may be people who have old documents showing they are entitled, but those documents were nullified by the 1942 adjudication, he said.

The conditions of the adjudication is that the water is only to be used for livestock, agriculture or domestic consumption, which means Nikolauson is misusing the water in the first place.

There are legal water uses along the canal, but Nikolauson is not one of them, he said.

Any earthen canal is going to have seepage, Moreno said. Middle Butte Creek has natural water flow, but the seepage from the canal added to that water flow. But still PG&E owns the water rights, he said.

He said the canal was lined to answer drought concerns and to improve the efficient delivery of water to legal water users.

Still, Nikolauson said he and the community deserve the same amount of water that has been flowing through the area for decades.

He doesn’t want his water to become stagnant. He doesn’t want his pools to become mosquito hatcheries, especially with the threat of Zika virus.

He said he is going to keep working in the park, which he said is a 501(c)3 nonprofit. He has plans to put in a small amphitheater and may host a fish fry if he can keeps his ponds from going dry.

He said the amount of seepage that fed Middle Butte Creek, and ultimately Nimshew Park, pales in comparison to the amount of water that flows through the canal every second.

“We need a small amount of what’s available,” he said. “There’s enough to keep everyone happy.”

There’s a petition on Change.org in the hope of getting the water to flow through the park again.